Mazda3: More fun than you can shake a stick shift at

DanNeil

Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

In two weeks, if all goes according to plan, I will drive the McLaren P1 at Dunsfold. That is the rubbish test track you see on “Top Gear.” And some sun-kissed day soon, I’ll mambo with the LaFerrari hypercar on a sublime corso in Italia. Va bene.

Mazda3: Desirable family car’s exotic edge

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The Mazda3 Grand Touring i is an affordable, desirable, entertaining family compact that's more fun on the open road than the McLaren P1 or a Ferrari hypercar, says Dan Neil. Photo: Mazda.

But a car like the Mazda3 i Grand Touring (as tested, $24,635) is, for people who like to drive, pound-for-pound, minute-by-minute, more fun than either of those ladies, stumbling around in their high horsepower stilettos. Outside of a racetrack, the McLaren and Ferrari — actually, most exotic hypercars — are slapstick figures: nearly impossible to get out of second gear without drawing the attention of the local constabulary; requiring secure parking for even a trip to the market; and mobbed by car-loving mouth-breathers most of the time. A dirigible would be more convenient.

Mazda’s freshly redesigned five-door hatch drives like it was on cartoon animation, just happy to be on its wheels and eager to heat up the tailpipe. It isn’t fast, particularly, and it doesn’t have unusually high limits. But it is so willing to stretch to reach them and so untroubled by hard driving, you want to pin a medal on its chest.

Here, the chassis department at Mazda
MZDAF, +0.53%7261, +0.89%
is exploiting a famous phenomenological loophole: It is more fun to go fast in a slow car than slow in a fast car (also known as the British Leyland Rule). And while there is only so much you can do to a compact front-drive four-cylinder, mass-market car to make it fun to drive, Mazda seems to have done it to the 3.

You could start with the car’s stiff, lightweight body structure — higher torsional rigidity than the previous generation, and less mass, by about 100 pounds overall. The car has some pretty fancy suspenders, too: With struts up front, multilinks in the rear and twin-tube dampers and antiroll bars front and rear, the Mazda3’s kinematics are highly evolved and agreeably balanced between agility and ride comfort.

The car behaves benignly as it transfers load from one side to the other, and it is generally crisp and directional. The only frustration is that the 3’s well-sorted chassis could use more athletic footwear than the 16-inch all-season radials. Even so, in second gear the 3 pulls like a baby tarpon. It has nice, dart-y steering, excellent road-holding composure corner to corner and…oh yeah, a stick shift — a slick, light, precise six-speed manual transmission. I used to love those.

Knowing manual gearboxes are doomed only made me appreciate the three-pedal Mazda3 more. Stirring first through third gears, chirping the tires, just bombing around town, the 3 was a hoot.

Actually, our “Soul Red Metallic” test car was fitted with the smaller of the Mazda3’s two available engines: The “i” 5-door with the Grand Touring option package (base price, $23,245) has Mazda’s direct-injection 2.0-liter power plant (155 hp and 150 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 rpm) under its sculptural hood. The comparable “s” model comes with a 2.5-liter four (184/185) but costs $3,250 more.

As for our specimen, the accepted practice is to load up press cars with every possible option and powertrain upgrades, like they were being built for the Maharaja. Why did they send me the car with the little engine? Because the 6-speed manual transmission comes only with the smaller, 2.0-liter engine; and the Mazda press office — fiendish and coercive — knows automotive journalists are defenseless against small, sporty, lightweight Euro-styled five-doors with manual transmissions. If it were a diesel I’d marry it.

I suppose at this point, I must observe that the sun is setting on manual transmissions. As it should. In an era of quick-twitch mechatronics — of continuously variable transmissions, 8-speed dual-clutch transaxles, 9-speed automatics with torque converters — using a series of steel linkages to engage and disengage gears while levering the clutch in and out of the way with your foot? It is barbaric.

Sentimentalists argue that semiautomatic and automatic systems are uninvolving to drive. You want involving? We should go back to wooden wheels and cable brakes.

Look, I only read the writing on the wall. I didn’t write it. Manual transmissions are, for example, slower than modern automatic and dual-clutch transmissions. Around a road course, a PDK-equipped, paddle-shifted Porsche 911 will steadily walk away from the exact same car with some stick-shifting yokel in the driver’s seat. As hybrid and electric parts take up a greater percentage of powertrain duties, gearboxes themselves will become obsolete.

Manual trannies are also less fuel-efficient than other cog-swappers, and rising fuel economy standards will only marginalize manual transmissions further. The percentage of new light vehicles sold in the U.S. with manual transmissions is in the single digits. Meanwhile, only a small and aging segment of the driving population even knows how to drive a manual transmission. Go ahead, leave the keys in it: A car with a stick shift is practically immune to theft.

For these reasons and more, manual transmissions are becoming as rare as unicorns. Ferrari doesn’t make a car with a manual transmission. Nor Lamborghini. Porsche and Corvette offer the mechanical curiosity of 7-speed manuals, but these are pandering and retrograde, actually sacrificing performance to nostalgia. Call it emo-engineering.

And yet, knowing manual gearboxes are doomed only made me appreciate the three-pedal Mazda3 more. Stirring first through third gears, chirping the tires, just bombing around town, the 3 was a hoot.

It is the little things: The positioning of the leather-wrapped steering wheel, small and wieldy, comfortable in the lowered position, with a direct, bolted-to-structure feel and a respectably quick rack rate. The Mazda’s foot-pedal position makes it easy to cover both pedals with the right foot, that is, to heel-and-toe downshift (kids, ask granddad).

Mazda North American Operations

The Mazda3’s new interior identity is sober, purposeful and much more richly detailed than the previous model, with dash and door inserts cast in dense sculptured urethane, premium-feeling leather on the gearshift and steering wheel, and sturdy switchgear with positive actuation. The Mazda’s rotary controller sits in the console between the front seats, a light and slick-feeling aluminum knob that allows users to sweep easily among the digital animations for navigation, apps and audio.

As for as the exterior styling, it has to be said, no company has come so far so fast as Mazda, and the 3 is the best example. First, the new grille, with louvered detailing and a thin line of brightwork at the lower lip that spreads out, winglike, over the headlamps. Much better.

And when did this car get so willowy, so slinky? The angle of the windshield rake is bold, like an Alfa Romeo that escaped from the farm. And yet forward quarter sightlines are conspicuously good, with the front roof pillars pulled back and the side mirrors now located on the doors.

In a more practical vein, I’d direct your attention to the price tag. Our test car, a 5-door Grand Touring model clocked in at $24,635, which included a lot of low-cost desirables: heated side mirrors and moonroof; variable heating seats and keyless entry/push-button start; rearview camera with cross-traffic alert and blind-spot monitoring; a Bose audio system with nine speakers; and, front and center, above the central air vents, a 7-inch touch screen hosting an elaborate suite of navigation, audio and app functions, including Pandora.

A Ferrari? No. But the Mazda3 i GT is an affordable, desirable, and entertaining family compact. I’d call that pretty exotic.

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